Corsair TwinX1024-3200XL Pro Review

@ 2004/06/14

When making memory choices a few good names come to mind for most of us. For those of us who have a [H]ard side, we know Corsair all to well from our overclocking rigs. However, is there a place in the HTPC world for high end ram such as the Corsair TwinX1024-3200XL Pro Pack we have for review today? For overclocking numbers and more on this latest Corsair TwinX release, read the review

ofcourse this ram performs better than it's competitors, but when i run the same tests on my rig here, it's almost a waste of money to replace the crappy but cheap apacers with probably 300€ expensive corsairs. Due to the very small increase in performance.

But when u need new ram anyways and u can afford it...

Comment
from calantak@ 2004/06/15

well, if I need 1 gig of ram anyway, and I want it to be worth something in the long run, why not go the xl way?

Comment
from jmke@ 2004/06/15

it all depends, if you overclock your videocard 10-15% for "that little extra" performance, then buying more expensive ram with lower timings will fit in the same boat.
if you run your system at default speeds, always; then no. buying this ram will give you no real advantage.
if you overclock your system and tweak it to the limit to have the best gaming experience, then low timings memory will give you a nice edge over the "default" brand.

Comment
from teki@ 2004/06/15

Hmmz almost bought the XL ram, when reading this it seems completely useless to buy decent ram.

Comment
from jmke@ 2004/06/15

"Far Cry" and Battle Field are about the only 2 games I know off which really show LARGE improvements when running them at high quality on 512mb vs 1GB

his conclusion is quite correct , since the bandwidth difference is almost completely invisible in real world game performance.

If I would put 2 identical systems next to each other, one running at CL3 3-3-8 vs CL2 2-2-5, I load up UT2004 and let you game on both machines.. you will have difficulities to figure out which one is which

sure in Q3A @ 640x480 the difference will be viewable through a timedemo loop, but in UT2003 at 1024x768+++ resolution with high detail, you'll see that the role RAM timings play is only a small part of the overall performance equation. Videocard & CPU take a much larger shunk of the pie when it comes down to determining in-game speed.

'Now this is where these modules really took me by surprise! Although these are PC3200 modules, Corsair states that with slightly higher latencies, they are capable of running at PC4000 (DDR500) speed. This was rather interesting, so I decided to see how high I can take them using a 1:1 ratio on the Soyo Dragon 2 Platinum Motherboard. I was completely impressed with the results. Not only was I able to run the board completely stable at 249FSB, but was able to do this while still maintaining the lower 2.5-3-3-7 latencies. In fact, these modules actually overclocked and performed much better than both the Corsair TwinX102'

this is a conclusion an oc'er would like

while this guys conclusion is:

'I can with certainty say that going from 512MB to 1GB is a upgrade that should be done by any gamer, especially a HTPC gamer. I could not believe the difference in my games as well how responsive my system felt. Far Cry and other games just seemed to hum along happily without any hiccups from hard drive paging. I can't say that the increased memory bandwidth in synthetic tests seemed to be a huge difference, but again that is synthetic testing not real world performance testing. Don't get me wrong the difference was there but it wasn't anything I would go leaping for joy over. The overclocking ability at nice timings is certainly a nice added bonus and I may have to continue on to see how far I can really push my system. This really has to be the main area where this memory shines retaining some fast timings even when the FSB was increased.

Corsair has had a reputation for putting out some of the best memory and I can't deny that this is a great product. The memory showed great stability even at increased speeds. It was nice to see the heatsinks bonded to the memory as opposed to using thermal tape which could cause problems later on. The LED lights are a nice touch but more for a case with windows on the side. The lifetime warranty really just adds to the products overall value. '